Translating twelfth century China

The original text by Fan, appended in full to the translation, is not voluminous at all. As a typical example of the youji (travel records) literature, the Treatises is written, as Hargett expounds, in a straightforward “reportorial-descriptive” language (p.xlvi). But a closer look at Fan’s methodological approach and the work’s content reveals that it is not a conventional youji but at once a gazetteer, an encyclopedia, and an ethnography. It comprises both passages outlining the landmarks, vegetation, and people of particular localities, and reportorial accounts on those areas’ customs and products. For Hargett, the Treatises is not only “a personal memoir of Fan’s happy and restful days in Guilin [in Guangxi]”, but also “a serious and detailed scholarly study”. Like many of his contemporaries, Fan was not only a curious traveller but also a keen observer. Containing large amount of personal observations and detailed information for informants, many of them “not generally found in local gazetteers” (p.4), the Treatises reflects Fan’s strenuous effort to report information and to relate these facts to potential readers who probably knew little or nothing about these matters. In this sense, this work, like many other youji, is extremely valuable as a source work (p.xxxvi).

The particular value of Fan’s accounts contained in the Treatises is enhanced by his relatively neutral attitude towards the area of Guangxi and the various non-Han peoples living there. For a long time in Chinese history, officials were sent to the remote and mountainous region of Guangxi for demotion or political exile. The reason why Fan headed for Guangxi was of no exception. However, Fan did not harbor much fear or distress but was surprisingly enthusiastic about his assignment. Guilin was certainly far from the Song political center in Lin’an (today’s Hangzhou), but when he arrived in Guilin in 1173 he “found peace of mind there” (p.3), and even after his tenure, he still “remain[ed] deeply attached to Guilin, so much that [he has] compiled and edited this [collection] of minutia and trivia” (p.4). Furthermore, Fan did not find himself in “a strange, alien land” (p.xxix) populated by non-Han “barbarians” who had not been assimilated into the orbit of Han-Chinese civilization, although Fan collectively termed them as man (literally: barbarians). In fact, he “refrained from ‘looking down on the [local] people’”, most of them probably non-Han, and “they in turn forgave my ignorance and trusted in my sincerity” (p.3). As the issue of political legitimacy became thorny again under the political and military pressure of the non-Han peoples from the north, in particular after the Jurchen seized the Song capital at Kaifeng and took over whole North China in 1127, there was a trend among Song literati to emphasize their cultural superiority over their non-Han neighbors to counteract their political and military inferiority and to strengthen legitimacy of their dynasty. Quite often too, those non-Han Chinese were described as “uncivilized barbarians”. But in the Treatises, Fan has clearly presented another pattern.

In fact, Fan’s observations and attitudes reflect how the Song endeavored to “maximize its control” in the southwestern border regions of the empire by “minimizing military conflict” with the large population of non-Han tribes-peoples residing there (p.xx). As the Song was already facing enormous pressure from the north, it endeavored to adopt a rather friendly diplomacy toward the tribesmen in the southwest. The Song followed the practice of “loose rein”, also known as “bridle and halter” (jimi), to organize submissive tribal peoples (or peoples at least willing to submit themselves to the Chinese sovereign) into the Chinese administrative hierarchy. Although many of the non-Chinese people on the Song’s southwestern borders were considered partially “sinicized”, but more often than not local chieftains still had near-absolute control over land distribution and tax collection within their jurisdictions. But as long as this “loose rein” could bring peace for the Song, it was ready to accept the fact that the tribesmen’s subordination existed only in name.

As is unavoidable in any translation of medieval Chinese text, some may have other suggestions for the translation or interpretation of individual words or sentences. For instance, on page 163, Fan’s original sentence, which Hargett translates as “they receive corn allowances and office appointments but only at the rank of senior or junior envoy”, would much better fit the context if it were translated as “many settlement chieftains […] purchased official ranks [from the Song], but [they got] only military ranks ranging from 9b to 8a”. Nonetheless, such minor quibbles should by no means diminish the remarkable achievement James M. Hargett has made in his conscientious translation and painstaking study of Fan Chengda’s Treatises of the Supervisor and Guardian of the Cinnamon Sea. Containing rich data about the natural world, material culture, and ethnography in China’s southwestern frontier in the twelfth century, this book is bound to attract both experts and students of Chinese history, culture, and ethnography.